


host no thrills

by transstevebucky



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Second Person, Post-All Out War Arc (Walking Dead)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 22:35:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,238
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transstevebucky/pseuds/transstevebucky
Summary: You watch him, sometimes.





	host no thrills

**Author's Note:**

> i was playin twdg and got. hardcore emo about lee and clem and i figured Hey this is Clearly the best way to deal with it. this isnt. Depressing. cool
> 
> anyway. have this!!
> 
> title from muse's screenager

You watch him, sometimes.

Mouth filled with the taste of copper and ash, hands shaking around a cigarette.

You see his hair turn honey-gold, burnished under the sun’s dimming rays, the arms outstretched like Christ on the cross, his namesake; the mask he wears so easily, like a second skin.

You pretend it doesn’t make your gut burn with need. You take another heaving breath in, tobacco and smoke and blood where you chewed your cheek raw last night. Again.

You watch people flock to him, his people even if he never leads, even if he stands in the shadows with hands crossed at the small of his back, eyes watching.

You see the way he smiles at them, and the broken way the mask shatters the moment they leave.

You see a man downtrodden and aching, buried six feet under and still screaming through the earth, begging to be seen.

You watch him, and you want, and you bleed through your teeth until it swirls down your chin, leaves stains on your leather vest; the one you cannot let go of even now.

He watches you back, sometimes.

Blue eyes wide, ocean-deep, mouth set into stone like Medusa’s victims, arms close to his body.

He takes the cigarette when you offer it to him.

He doesn’t mention the charred skin on the back of your hands, so you do not mention the blood coating the hems of his sleeves.

+++

“Why don’t you tell her?” You ask, one night, legs against the cool metal of his trailer, back bared to the moon.

“It’s easier not to,” he says, with a wry smile, the face of a man who gives and never takes, who sleeps every few days and never enough even then, “she needs my help.”

He needs his own help more, you do not say. You don’t speak about the knives he hides under his pillow at night. The mornings you wake to watch him stretch through yoga poses you will never know the name for. There is a blankness to his eyes, those days; the early fall chill cold on his skin as he bends towards a sun that refuses to be forgiving.

“Yeah,” you agree, even though you know the truth, “but you can’t help her if you’re three seconds away from falling apart.”

He laughs, cold, neck bent backwards, hands splayed against the creaking metal, nails bitten down to the beds, skin pulled away with indentations that fit his teeth.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, but you hear what he is saying.

 _I don’t matter_ , his mouth tells you, pink and flushed from biting, _I will give my life for anything I can._

“Man,” you say, passing him the blood-stained cigarette, “we’re both real fucked up, you know that?”

He smiles. It isn’t a phantom thing, no. It is bright even under the moon, teeth catching like a vampire before the kill. You half expect to watch blood run from his mouth. “Yeah, sweetheart. We really are.”

(He calls you that, sometimes: sweetheart. Darling, on other days, when he’s affecting even more of a mask than usual. You are nothing more than friends, than roommates, but the words send the blood inside you that is yet to be spilled thrumming with warmth, aching with need.)

He breathes through a mouthful of smoke, clouding the cool evening air as he clenches his teeth, rolls his tongue to form concentric circles flowing outward.

You have never learned how to do it. He will offer, sometime, when he’s bone-deep tired.

You will not refuse.

You could never refuse.

+++

He sings.

You know this. 

You hear him, in the mornings when he doesn’t wake up screaming. 

In your tiny shared shower, voice warm and honey-thick, molasses-slow.

He sings like the world has its fingers in his collarbones, pressing him down into the dirt.

You hum the tune back, throughout the day, snippets of song as he passes on his chores.

His face cracks into vulnerability, every time.

You do not stop.

+++

You kiss him when the light dies out in your trailer.

It’s winter, now, and he gets colder than he will ever admit.

He’s given all of his blankets to the other residents of Hilltop, so he lays, shuddering, tucked into the crease of the couch cushions like hell will swallow him and warm his toes.

You pull his body close; warmth, you say, but there’s a look in his eyes that says he knows. 

Rick knew, too; those months before the prison. When you’d sit back-to-back with him, hands steady on your crossbow, and he would know that in the night you call his name into your fist.

“If I knew hypothermia would get me a cuddle, I would have gone full nudist weeks ago,” he says around chattering teeth, a jaw that cracks with a yawn before clamping shut again.

You roll your eyes at him, pull him ever-nearer; tell him to stop being an idiot, get under the goddamn coat, why’ve you got all those gloves if you never fucking use them.

“You care about me,” he says, like it’s a revelation.

Like you haven’t been tracking him through the crowds of Hilltop for weeks. Like you don’t sit vigil outside his door so he can rest; the same way he did those nights after the Sanctuary, when all those scars on your back burned hotter than they had in years.

“Duh,” you tell him, because you think so much about that full mouth, that golden-brown beard, and you don’t know how to admit that, “you’re family.”

“Can I,” he asks, tilting his head one way and then the other, like he’s searching for an answer. He has stopped shivering, now, but every few seconds his breath catches in his throat. “Kiss you?”

You lean in first; catch his jaw with your burned, scarred hands. Smile against his mouth as he breathes you in, tucks his tongue into the crease of your lips. 

He kisses like he does everything else; with fervor, a fever, with something holding him back.

You haul him into your lap, closer than he’s ever been before, hands spread over his spine, feeling the barely coated knobs of the single vertebra. 

“Thank you,” he says, sweetly, right against the line of your jaw, then against your temple, that gunshot wound around which hair never grows, “thank you.”

“Kiss me,” you tell him, because you are no good at this, but you’d do anything for him, still, “now.”

“Okay,” he promises, and he warms up under your hands, shuddering when your fingertips brush his shoulder blades, “okay, Daryl. Okay.”

The mask falls away.

For the briefest moment in time, when everything stands still and the planets align, he is no longer the larger-than-life personality he plays up.

He is not Jesus, with his mouth to yours, fingers playing over your scars.

He is not Jesus, broken apart and red-mouthed.

He is Paul, thighs splayed apart, breath heating your throat.

He is Paul, still, with his jeans around his knees and one hand between your thighs.

He is Paul, shaking, neck stretched back; hands clasped in your shirt like a benediction, a prayer.

He is beautiful, and otherworldly, and so flawed it makes your muscles burn.

You love him. You love him. You love him.

You grin against his mouth.

It is the first time in months you do not taste metal.

**Author's Note:**

> gaydaryl on tumblr / transrickgrimes on twitter / gaydaryl on ko-fi


End file.
